laptop hard-drive power consumption

[speardane]

I've just tried to upgrade the disk in my Toshiba Portege S100.

currently it has an 80Gb Fujitsu 2.5" SATA drive (rated 5v 600ma)
tried to replace it with a 200Gb Toshiba SATA MK2035GS (rated 5v 1A)

Physical installation great - easier and quicker than a desktop!

reloaded XP - appeared to be ok - rebooted - repetitive blue screen - even in "safe mode" always after everything appeared to load - couldn't get full message appeared to be faulty hardware

tried a Linux "live Disk" - booted perfectly - couldn't find any disks (yet I know the same distro {Ubuntu Feisty} found the SATA disks perfectly well on my desktop).

reverted to original drive - everything works well - I hadn't broken something on installation...

Is the problem the power rating?
if so - is there somewhere that compare's SATA laptop drive ratings?
or, has Toshiba done something odd with there SATA connectivity?
or.....?

[Steve B]

whats the specs of the adaptor brick?

[GoNz0]

you could rule that out by running it on battery, it dont add up 400ma isnt going to cause those faults ?

i would go for a BIOS compatability issue, any BIOS updates you can put on it >?

[speardane]

Steve & Gonzo

The adapter is 70w (output) - if I put the drive in an unpowered USB caddy - it's readable.
Does the boot-up do anything to draw extra current, I wonder?

I just checked with Toshiba - there's a very recent Bios upgrade - I'll try & see.

PS If you don't hear from me for a long time either

• I am taking a long time to do the tiling (I promised to do)
• I've caused a problem with the Bios upgrade

cheers
John

[Steve B]

haha good luck

[speardane]

great roll on the drums - pressed the go button
"you do not need to upgrade the Bios current v1.50 latest v1.50"

what a sad life, I am almost disappointed...

I did format the disk via the Toshiba recovery utility. Perhaps I should try to format and install the O/S whilst it is connected as the 2nd disk - maybe Toshiba / Windows XP does something to the boot sectors?

John

[GoNz0]

maybe use the windows CD to format the disk?

100% no way on this planet that 400ma extra on bootup with cause that, at the end of the day running the CPU at 100% burn in against idle is a hell of a lot more than 400ma, infact i dare say the VGA draws more than that when it jumps to high res mode..

bad disk, or bad format, or incompatability with disk and main board. real shame there was no BIOS update, can you double check you have it set right in BIOS? LBA and all that should be checked against the spec of the drive.